Elephants Can Remember - Agatha Christie [25]
‘Something that happened out East, perhaps,’ he suggested. ‘I mean – well, that’s where elephants come from, isn’t it? Or from Africa. Anyway, who’s been talking to you about elephants?’ he added.
‘A friend of mine happened to mention them,’ said Poirot. ‘Someone you know,’ he said to Superintendent Spence. ‘Mrs Oliver.’
‘Oh, Mrs Ariadne Oliver. Well!’ He paused.
‘Well what?’ said Poirot. ‘Well, does she know something, then?’ he asked. ‘I do not think so as yet,’ said Poirot, ‘but she might know something before very long.’ He added thoughtfully, ‘She’s that kind of person. She gets around, if you know what I mean.’
‘Yes’,’ said Spence. ‘Yes. Has she got any ideas?’ he asked.
‘Do you mean Mrs Ariadne Oliver, the writer?’ asked Garroway with some interest.
‘That’s the one,’ said Spence. ‘Does she know a good deal about crime? I know she writes crime stories. I’ve never known where she got her ideas from or her facts.’
‘Her ideas,’ said Poirot, ‘come out of her head. Her facts – well, that’s more difficult.’ He paused for a moment.
‘What are you thinking of, Poirot, something in particular?’
‘Yes,’ said Poirot. ‘I ruined one of her stories once, or so she tells me. She had just had a very good idea about a fact, something that had to do with a long-sleeved woollen vest. I asked her something over the telephone and it put the idea for the story out of her head. She reproaches me at intervals.’
‘Dear, dear,’ said Spence. ‘Sounds rather like that parsley that sank into the butter on a hot day. You know. Sherlock Holmes and the dog who did nothing in the night time.’
‘Did they have a dog?’ asked Poirot.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘I said did they have a dog? General and Lady Ravenscroft. Did they take a dog for that walk with them on the day they were shot? The Ravenscrofts.’
‘They had a dog – yes,’ said Garroway. ‘I suppose, I suppose they did take him for a walk most days.’
‘If it had been one of Mrs Oliver’s stories,’ said Spence, ‘you ought to have found the dog howling over the two dead bodies. But that didn’t happen.’
Garroway shook his head.
‘I wonder where the dog is now?’ said Poirot.
‘Buried in somebody’s garden, I expect,’ said Garroway. ‘It’s fourteen years ago.’
‘So we can’t go and ask the dog, can we?’ said Poirot. He added thoughtfully, ‘A pity. It’s astonishing, you know, what dogs can know. Who was there exactly in the house? I mean on the day when the crime happened?’
‘I brought you a list,’ said Superintendent Garroway, ‘in case you like to consult it. Mrs Whittaker, the elderly cook-housekeeper. It was her day out so we couldn’t get much from her that was helpful. A visitor was staying there who had been governess to the Ravenscroft children once, I believe. Mrs Whittaker was rather deaf and slightly blind. She couldn’t tell us anything of interest, except that recently Lady Ravenscroft had been in hospital or in a nursing home – for nerves but not illness, apparently. There was a gardener, too.’
‘But a stranger might have come from outside. A stranger from the past. That’s your idea, Superintendent Garroway?’
‘Not so much an idea as just a theory.’
Poirot was silent, he was thinking of a time when he had asked to go back into the past, had studied five people out of the past who had reminded him of the nursery rhyme ‘Five little pigs.’ Interesting it had been, and in the end rewarding, because he had found out the truth.
Chapter 6
An Old Friend Remembers
When Mrs Oliver returned to the house the following morning, she found Miss Livingstone waiting for her.
‘There have been two telephone calls, Mrs Oliver.’
‘Yes?’ said Mrs Oliver.
‘The first one was from Crichton and Smith. They wanted to know whether you had chosen the lime-green brocade or the pale blue one.’
‘I haven’t made up my mind yet,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘Just remind me tomorrow morning, will you? I’d like to see it by night light.’
‘And the other was from a foreigner, a Mr Hercule Poirot, I believe.’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘What did he want?